Patrick Mahomes was making the four-hour drive home to Tyler after an unofficial recruiting visit to the University of Texas during his sophomore season when his dad tried to steer him to baseball full time.

Mahomes had been moved up to the varsity squad at Whitehouse High School as a sophomore to play safety, and that is what the Longhorns envisioned him playing.

"I told them, 'Well, that lets me know y'all don't watch film because my son ain't made a tackle in two years. He'll intercept the ball, but he's not a defensive back,' " said his father Pat, who pitched 11 seasons in the major leagues. "So when we were riding home, I actually tried to talk him out of playing football altogether."

It's interesting because what launched Mahomes into a rising NFL prospect and sure first-round pick when the draft kicks off April 27 was the commitment to play only football, a decision he made just 15 months ago.

Mahomes remains an intriguing prospect for the Bears. He was to make an official visit to Halas Hall this weekend after general manager Ryan Pace, coach John Fox, offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains, quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone and director of player personnel Josh Lucas traveled to Texas Tech for a private workout. Mahomes has had seven private workouts and soon will complete 12 official visits.

He might not make it out of the top 10, the second hot quarterback in as many years for veteran agent Leigh Steinberg, who repped the Broncos' Paxton Lynch last year.

Mahomes was driven to play quarterback at Whitehouse, fascinated by the difficulty of the position, and defensive back didn't hold the same appeal. If he had to keep playing on that side of the ball, he wasn't sure if he was interested — especially when he could use the fall to hone his baseball skills as an outfielder and a pitcher with a fastball in the mid-90s.

His mother Randi didn't figure he would be comfortable sitting in the stands watching his friends play football, so she pushed him to stick with it. He wound up beating out best friend Ryan Cheatham for the starting quarterback job after three games his junior year. His football career began to take off even as he remained an elite baseball prospect, outdueling White Sox minor-league fireballer Michael Kopech and rival Mount Pleasant as a senior. Kopech touched 98 on the radar gun and struck out 12 while allowing only two hits. Mahomes threw a no-hitter with 16 strikeouts to earn a 2-1 victory.

Believe it or not, Mahomes intrigued more major-league teams as an outfielder and likely would have been selected in the top five rounds of the 2014 draft if he had shown an interest in signing. The Tigers took a flyer on him in the 37th round, and it's not hard to envision him being in Double A along with Kopech.

After all, as a kid he spent summers playing catch in the outfield of big-league parks with his father, who pitched briefly for the Cubs in 2002, and his godfather, LaTroy Hawkins.

But he went to Texas Tech to be a two-sport athlete. The Red Raiders were really the only major football program to pursue him despite gaudy statistics in two seasons at the second-highest high school level in Texas in the town that Earl Campbell, known as the "Tyler Rose," put on the map.

Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury knew he was pursuing the right kid even as he was the only coach on Mahomes' trail.

"It didn't always look like maybe it was supposed to look, his style of play, but you could always see he had an immense skill set," Kingsbury said. "It was pretty evident he had (rare) ability, and I felt if we could corral it in enough that he could be exceptional. He ended up being exceptional."

That fall, Davis Webb suffered a shoulder injury, and Kingsbury turned to his true freshman backup. Mahomes took the job and never relinquished it, with Webb eventually transferring to Cal. That winter, Mahomes was ready to put down his bat and glove.

"He wanted to stop playing baseball his freshman year in college and focus on football," Randi said. "I held him accountable because the reason he picked Tech, not just because of the coaches, was because they were going to allow him to play both sports."

After passing for 4,653 yards with 36 touchdowns and 15 interceptions as a sophomore, he announced his decision to stick with football in January 2016. That meant workouts with the football team when otherwise he would be involved in baseball. That meant spring ball without having to rush to or from baseball. That meant an expanded leadership role in the locker room. That meant his throwing motion, still a little unorthodox, could be refined.

"He really worked on the mental aspect of it and studying film and learning our offense and the intricacies of it," Kingsbury said. "The strides I saw him make were astronomical, and I can only guess that is going to continue."

'Air Raid' stigma

The challenge now is for Mahomes to break through as the first quarterback from an "Air Raid" college offense to make it big in the NFL. Cal's Jared Goff, whom the Rams made the No. 1 pick last year, had a bumpy rookie season with not a lot of help surrounding him. Former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach made the offense popular and uses it at Washington State. His system has spread to schools like Cal, Texas A&M and West Virginia, and, of course, it remains at Texas Tech.

"I have reservations about anyone coming out of Texas Tech, Washington State or pick your school with that system," one national scout for an NFC team said in the fall.

You have heard all of the obstacles before. The spread quarterback doesn't call the play in the huddle. They're not accustomed to calling protections. Their hot reads are simple. They struggle if their first read is covered, and panic sets in. They haven't played under center. These are real challenges but ones that plenty of successful NFL quarterbacks already have overcome after playing in spread systems.

Mahomes is bigger — he measured 6-foot-2, 225 pounds at the NFL scouting combine — than most successful Air Raid quarterbacks, including Johnny Manziel, and his arm strength is on a different level. Just search the internet for video of him throwing a ball 65 yards from his knees last summer.

"The criticism of quarterbacks in this system carries no merit with me," Kingsbury said. "But I understand where they get it from. With Patrick, you can put on the film and see that he is able to do things within a spread offense that very few quarterbacks can. His arm talent is elite. His athleticism is way up there. He is a very cerebral player. So it's hard for me to say he could be lumped in there with other guys just because they played in a spread offense."

Mahomes had the green light to check plays at the line of scrimmage anywhere on the field. That meant run/pass options that were in the scheme and checking to a completely different play.

"If you watch me play and you compare me to those guys, you realize I am a different type of quarterback," Mahomes said. "It's me controlling the offense and having full control. That's the stuff that I feel teams are looking at, and that is why you are seeing the momentum grow in my corner."

Eager to learn

If the planes, trains and automobiles game Mahomes has been playing to criss-cross the country in the pre-draft process is wearing on him, it wasn't evident in a conversation Thursday night.

"It has been fun just really getting to meet with a lot of the great offensive minds in football and getting to talk to them," said Mahomes, the 2016 Big 12 scholar-athlete of the year. "They kind of pick my brain, but I am learning from them. Every day I am taking an opportunity to get better, whether it's on visits or workouts. I'm listening to those guys."

For example, during one private workout a quarterbacks coach talked to him about making throws to his left. Mahomes didn't want to reveal which team he was from out of respect for the organization but said the lesson was to treat a throw to the left like a golf shot. When you address a golf shot, you want to be facing the direction you want the ball to go. The same goes for a throw. He needed to clean up his footwork throwing to the left.

"That really stuck in my head because I play golf," Mahomes said. "I need to get lined up with my target. You take that information and little bits and try to use it with the next interview and the next workout and your career as you get started."

He proved his toughness last season playing through sprains to both shoulders and with a broken left wrist suffered in the first quarter of a 66-59 loss to Oklahoma on Oct. 22 in which he threw for 734 yards. Mahomes completed 30 of 46 passes for 586 yards and six touchdowns in a 54-35 season-ending victory over Baylor that Pace attended.

Mahomes considered an invitation to attend the draft in Philadelphia but decided to remain in Tyler for a large party with family, friends, former high school teammates and coaches. On his Twitter account Thursday, he wrote "Two weeks …" and included an emoji of anxious eyes.

"There is so much anticipation and excitement I just want to get there to know where I am going to live for hopefully the next 15 to 20 years and know what playbook you are going to have," he said. "There is all that stuff, and being a football player it's all about the team and you just want to get to that team and find out who your brothers are."

Clemson's Deshaun Watson, North Carolina's Mitchell Trubisky and Notre Dame's DeShone Kizer are considered the elite quarterbacks in the class along with Mahomes, who believes he's the best.

"There are a lot of great quarterbacks in the class, and I feel like a lot of us are real close," Mahomes said. "But I just feel like I can do a lot of things that other quarterbacks can't do."

Comparisons are always a dangerous game in the pre-draft process because first-round picks turn into 50-50 propositions four years into their NFL careers, but Mahomes' improvisational skills have led some to draw parallels to Brett Favre.

"When you're talking about guys who can make those unbelievable throws, and Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre are all-time greats so I hate to make that comparison, but his style of play is that," Kingsbury said. "It might not always be on schedule. It might not always be pretty. But he has an ability to extend plays, to move to his right and move to his left, and make incredible throws down the field that most quarterbacks simply can't attempt. That's a special talent."

Imagine if the Bears had a quarterback with talent like a Packers quarterback. It's something they're clearly considering.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 16, 2017, in the Sports section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "A Favre clone for Bears? - Patrick Mahomes' style reminds some of Pack QB - and intrigues Chicago brass" —
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